Morning Constitutional: How Is Recruiting Different Now For Ryan Day?

Today’s Topic: How Is Recruiting Different Now For Ryan Day?

Ryan Day’s life has changed in a number of ways since he took over for Urban Meyer as Ohio State’s head coach.

For one, he can’t go out for dinner and be unnoticed much anymore. For two, he’s no longer isolated on offense and only building relationships with the players on his side of the ball.

For three — which is probably the most important change of all — Day is involved in every aspect of the Ohio State recruiting machine.

No longer is he the guy who keeps people up late at night in order to look at the tape of one more high school quarterback. Now he’s the guy who is kept up late by his assistant coaches so he can look at a linebacker or a tight end or a cornerback.

And then he has to get to know all of them.

So yeah, it’s a bit different for him now.

“It is. Because you’ve got your hands on everybody,” he said. “The head coach has to recruit everyone. So there’s a lot that goes into it. A lot of it is the relationships that are built before they get on campus so that when we do see them, it’s not, ‘Hey. I’m Ryan Day, how are you? Where are you from?’ That kind of thing. A lot of the relationships have been built on the front end so we can kind of get down to business and kind of answer the questions they have about the school and the different things that we have to offer.”

When Urban Meyer announced his retirement, the Buckeyes lost some commitments. Players had built relationships with Meyer and now that relationship had been removed.

That was the case for 4-star Florida defensive back Lejond Cavazos [pictured above]. He decommitted from Ohio State the same day that it was announced the Meyer was retiring.

The Buckeyes haven’t given up on his recruitment, and clearly neither has Day. Cavazos was on campus this past weekend and things appear to be trending heavily in Ohio State’s direction once again.

While Cavazos and others will have to get to know Day as OSU’s head coach, Day knows it’s going to take more than just him to continue the outstanding recruiting precedent set by Meyer since 2012.

“We have a great staff here and everybody’s involved in recruiting,” Day said after Saturday’s open practice. “We had a function the other night and I looked around and just about everybody in the room was working. They were working. Because it takes a village to recruit people these days. Not one or two guys can recruit anybody. It takes the whole village and that’s everybody involved in it.

“On a day like today, you have to be very organized, you’ve got to have really good personnel guys that can funnel through the people and we can handle it. And it’s fun to be around when there’s a lot of people here, but at the same time you’ve got to make sure you’re managing it the right way.”